When you’re first planning a trip abroad, depending on your location of study, you might be thinking about all the delicious food you will be indulging. Pasta in Italy, fish and chips in London and Turkish delights in Istanbul — delicious! But one thing you might not be thinking about is the cost of these foreign delicacies.
After about two weeks of studying abroad in London, an endless amount of meals in restaurants and trips to Starbucks, my bank account had a big dent (and I mean big). It was time to do the adult thing and go food shopping. I headed down to my local grocery store with my shopping list in hand. I walked into the store with full confidence that I would be able to navigate the aisles and find everything I needed. One problem: it was prime shopping time. Hundreds (okay, maybe not hundreds, but a lot!) of people were rushing by me, trying to get their groceries for the week. I felt like I was in the middle of a game show and the person to the check out first won the prize. After what felt like three hours (really thirty minutes) of trying to get past people to find what I wanted I was able to check out.
“That wasn’t too bad,” I thought to myself. Once I got back to my flat I put my groceries away and sat down. Little did I know shopping was the easy part but actually being able to cook something was going to be a challenge. I don’t know how to cook anything. Maybe pasta or grilled cheese but that’s about it. Now, what I should have done at this point was look up recipes and figure out what to make but, instead, I just made a sandwich. Unfortunately, this is how the rest of my abroad cooking adventures went. I honestly just became too lazy to research recipes and cook. I’ve been living on frozen pizza and peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.
The best advice I can provide? Buy a cookbook and have your parents teach you how to do simple things before you leave for abroad. While yes, you might state that you will cook while you are abroad, in reality, you won’t. You especially won’t if you don’t even have some background knowledge of the use of the kitchen. Learn now, you wont regret it!